Iceland's New Audur Subsea Cable

Iceland's New Audur Subsea Cable

Farice is building a new 16 to 24 fibre pair cable named after an Icelandic matriarch, Audur The Deep Minded, who sailed from Scotland to Iceland in the 9th century during the first wave of migration to the island. The cable lands in Southeast Iceland and in Scotland near Glasgow. The Icelandic backhaul will be fibre, but the British side is most likely spectrum. Farice views Audur as a replacement for the 22 year old FARICE-1. The ship survey will take place in the summer of 2027 with RFS planned for 2030.

Audur falls into the monster capacity cable category. Sixteen fibre pairs can easily achieve 320 Tbps with 24 fibre pairs almost reaching a half petabit per second. What is really striking about this is Iceland's population, which although rapidly increasing due to immigration, is just shy of 400K. Undoubtedly, this reflects Farice's bullish assessment of data center demand driven by cheap hydro power and modest cooling needs. Although Iceland is often associated with geothermal, hydro is the dominant source of electricity. In fact, the country has three aluminum smelting plants all built there to take advantage of the cheap power. Iceland should not be lumped in the same category as relatively poor Greenland. Iceland's per capita real GDP is 15th in the global ranking. The country is highly prosperous. It is a tribute to a highly educated and skilled population.


Map of Iceland's Fiber Optic Subsea Cables


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